Fish Out of Water
by theUglySpirit
Summary: They say you can't go home again. I didn't even try. I went to Benny's instead. T for language and general mayhem. Cross-over with TWTTN.
1. Chapter 1

Okay, it's back...

SE Hinton owns Rumble Fish and That Was Then, This is Now.

a/n: I was re-reading Rumble Fish recently and noticed that in the copyright notes it says that Hinton published a portion of it in the Tulsa University Alumni magazine in 1968. So, I started thinking that- instead of the bulk of Rumble Fish taking place in the early 70s- maybe the bulk of the story takes place in the late 60s at the same time she was writing That Was Then, This Is Now. When Rusty-James meets Steve on the beach, that's the 70s. He says he's been in the reformatory for five years then, so I put the beach scene around 1973 o 1974. Suddenly a whole new world of Rumble Fish possibilities opened up for me…

**Fish Out of Water**

Part One- Short-Haired Woman

_My brother used to tell me that you couldn't hang a picture of our mother on a wall and have it stay there. That's why we didn't have one hanging around. She was just too free, had too much life in her. Even her picture couldn't be made to stay in one place._

_I found a picture of our mother once. I shut it in a drawer and it stayed there. Shows what he knew._

_My brother could talk a lot of shit._

1975-

They say you can't go home again. I didn't even try. Home was never anything more than a mattress in whatever cold-water walk-up my dad was barely making rent on.

I tried to go to Benny's instead. It was still called Benny's- his name was still painted on the window. Now the windows were painted over to make the place dark. The bar was serving actual booze now, not just chocolate milk.

I tried to order one anyway. The girl behind the ball was a real looker, and I wanted to say something to draw attention to myself.

"We got creamer," she told me. "For coffee and we have Kailua. I could make you a White Russian with coffee creamer, Rusty-James."

"You know who I am I?" That pleased me, I got to admit. She was a fine-looking, little thing and so it sort of got me off that she knew my name. I couldn't place hers, but I got the feeling I could get her to tell me. I decided to hold off on asking to see if I could guess. If I'd ever banged her once-upon-a-time, she didn't seem mad about it.

"I know who you are. You damned-near used to haunt this place, didn't you? Looks like it grew up right along with you." She paused to raise an eyebrow at me and then asked, "You did grow up, didn't you, Rusty-James?"

I just laughed and looked around like I was taking in the stunning décor. Benny didn't do much decorating when the place was for kids. If he was still running the joint, that much hadn't changed about him.

I gestured to the tap, indicating that I'd take a beer instead of whatever a White Russian was.

"So, is Benny still around?" I asked the girl.

She was short. She had to stand on her toes to pull the tap. That was alright by me. I got a good look at her that way. She was wearing these tight, little corduroy pants so I got a pretty good dose of her frame. She was small, but she was stacked.

Her hair was short- really short- and normally I don't like that. I like to run my fingers through a girl's hair if she'll give me the chance. I like it when they try to pull it up but just that one loose piece keeps falling down over their cheek. This girl looked like she'd have that kind of hair if it was grown out- unruly. It was curly and so black that it shown bluish in the fluorescent light.

"_I don't want no woman whose hair ain't no longer than mine_," I mused as she set the beer down in front of me.

Didn't even faze her.

She finished the line for me: "_She ain't no good for nothin' but trouble_. Lighnin' Hopkins. I was a lot more trouble when I had a lot more hair. I got in the wrong car with a couple of dudes this one time in high school. They cut it all off for me. I never did grow it out again. I took it as a sign, I guess."

"Sign of what?"

"That it was time for me to be someone else," she said and frowned then. She wheeled back to the question I forgot I'd asked. "Benny's still around. He's kinda…he tells people he had a stroke. I tend to think he o.d'd and didn't finish the job. Whatever. It's his business. He'll be down in an hour or so. He helps me close down 'cause he says I can't clean the place right."

She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she didn't mind. Benny probably wasn't much help to her. He was squirrelly back when I knew him too. He probably just came down to watch her.

"He still got the rooms upstairs too?" I asked. Benny used to rent the rooms upstairs out to drunks. It made for a strangely populated building- middle school kids and winos. My dad got one of those rooms for a whole six weeks once before Benny tossed him- and all of us- out. I had thought living above Benny's would have been the coolest thing in the world, but it didn't turn out that way. Turns out, having my home life forever hovering over my street life wasn't what I wanted. I was happy as a clam when Benny turned us out.

The girl shook her head. "He don't own the building anymore. He pays rent on this place and his room. The guy who owns the building…hell, I don't remember who he is. Same dude who owns the building next door. Way back when, we'd have called him a Soc. He don't ever come here so I don't really care."

That made me smile- to hear someone use the old words again: greasers and Socs. They'd gone the way of the dinosaurs before I got to the sixth grade. This girl was a couple of years ahead of me in school, though, and she knew all about greasers and Socs. I knew who she was now. Her brothers were some mean operators. They had nothing on the Motorcycle Boy, but they were mean sons of bitches just the same. This girl knew a greaser from a Soc when she saw one.

"That's a goddamned shame," I said, leaning forward over the bar. "About Benny…and the rooms. I was kind of looking for a place to stay for a couple of days. I ain't going to be in town long. Just tying up a few loose ends with my old man."

She pressed her lips together to hide a smile.

"Uh huh," she said.

"Yeah. My old man's dead, you know, so it won't be long. Really, I got nothing keeping me here but some bills he didn't pay, some bets he didn't own up on. Just a couple of days…if you know of anything…"

"I ain't running a hotel," she said. "Or a whore house."

I tossed up my hands in a show of innocence and took a step back from the bar.

"Whoa, honey, I didn't say I was looking for anything like that either. I'm in mourning…for my old man. I can barely hold it together. I'm emotionally wrought."

She laughed out loud at that. She had a beautiful smile. She was a gorgeous girl, one of them Black Irish girls with the blue eyes and the black hair. She was wearing these huge hoop earrings and they swung back and forth when she laughed.

"Yeah, you're real bent out of shape," she said. "I know who you are, Rusty-James, and you got to know who my brothers are. You think you're going to pull any shit with me, and they'll show the meaning of wrought. Besides, I got a roommate. You're sleeping on the couch."

* * *

She locked up the bar and ran across the street with me around midnight. She lived upstairs on the third floor of a building owned by the same asshole who owned everything else surrounding it. She opened the door and pointed to the couch.

"That'll have to do," she said.

"Like a little slice of Heaven," I told her. I bounced down on it and sprawled out just to prove to her how comfy I could be.

She rolled her eyes and went to get a blanket from somewhere. While she puttered around she called back to me that here was the kitchen and the bathroom, stay out of her bedroom, and if I could get the TV to work more power to me.

Her bedroom was right off of the living room. There was a half-open door, but also a square hole in the wall like someone had cut a window between the rooms. I guessed it was to let in outside light. The living room was interior, but there were windows looking out in the bedroom. She'd hung some kind of gauzy scarf in the window between the rooms.

The TV sat on a little table beneath a framed picture of JFK. I remembered that about these people too- Catholics who sent their kids to the Catholic school and poured their dough into the Catholic Church when they couldn't afford to feed their own kids.

A pair of military dog tags hung off the corner of the frame. My curiosity got the best of me and I got up to check them out. I lifted them carefully into my hand so she wouldn't hear me doing it. They read:

**Shepard, Charles F.**

**SS# 266-20-1492**

**O Pos**

**Catholic**

The frame around the entryway into the kitchen creaked when she leaned against it. No way could I make like I was just playing with the TV antenna.

"He got himself all kinds of military training now?" I asked. "He learn fifty-three ways to kill a man? Should I be afraid?"

She shook her head. "Not of him. Not where he's at."

She shrugged and stepped around me to toss a blanket and a pillow on the couch.

"Sorry. I run my mouth…I got a gift…"

She walked past me again and tapped the dog tags so they swung like her earrings.

"I'm sure it's a sin to say it," she said, "but those two getting sent away was the best thing that ever happened to me. That one ain't ever coming back…"

She returned again with a towel for me and continued:

"Tim, on the other hand, gets released next year. Did his country a service by getting sent to McAlester. He's in McLeod now. Got the holy hell beat out of him in that riot a couple of years ago. They moved him to McLeod because he's supposed to be infirmed now or something. Still ain't looking forward to having him back. As long as he's still drawing breath, that boy'll be breathing down my neck."

The light was bad, but I might have seen tears well up in her eyes. For a second she just looked so sad. I kind of got the impression she'd flip out if I tried to touch her, so I just shifted on my feet. If she wanted to hug or something, I'd just let her come in for it.

She shook it off.

"My roommate's Corrina. She might get home before me, but I'll call her at work so she'll know. I got to go. Benny'll think I abandoned ship."

She stepped around me and out into the hall.

"Yeah, thanks, Angela," I said. The door had already closed, but I figured she already knew I had known her name all along.


	2. Chapter 2

SE Hinton owns Rusty James and Angela.

**Fish Out of Water**

Two-

There's a dude on the late news- looking like Elvis in big sunglasses and sideburns- talking about how he knows the way to eternal salvation. He says it ain't here in Tulsa, and I believe that. He says it's out west, in California. I know it ain't there either.

At two o'clock, the lock turns on the door and a little blonde pokes her head in. I turn on to my side from where I'm lying on the couch to get a look at her. She'd be cute as beans if she'd smile.

No smile for me, though.

"Rusty James?" She asks and steps in.

"I ain't Santa Claus."

"Yeah, no shit." She ain't afraid of me, though, because she dumps a heavy purse down by the door, right where I can see it. She isn't concerned that I might take something.

I say, "so you're Corrina?"

She nods and bends down to take off her shoes.

"Co-rrina…Co-rrina…" I sing the song and she rolls her eyes. She's heard it a million times, probably just this evening.

"I got to get some sleep. I just pulled a double," she says. "Can you turn that off?"

She gestures to the TV, but then she stops and gets transfixed for a moment by the man in the sideburns.

"You want me to turn it off?" I ask her.

"They're just passing through," she replies, referring to the man and his church I guess. "Nothing good ever sticks around here for long."

"Does it ever leave and then come back?" I ask.

She shakes off her trance and shrugs at me. "You tell me. I ain't never left yet."

Then she walks away before I can answer. I sit up and turn the TV off. Corrina goes from the bathroom into the bedroom. I listen to her get into the bed and then nod off myself listening to her breathe. Not too long after, Angela comes in. She doesn't say a word to me or try to wake me up.

I listen again as she gets into the bed with Corrina. They're voices are quiet, but I can tell Corrina ain't happy about something- probably me. Angela calms her right down. They're cuddling up. The noises- the breathing- are familiar enough to me, just not what I'd expected of two girls.

I don't know what I'm going to say about it- or anything- when I get up in the morning. Probably nothing. Just keep it to myself that I know and proceed knowing that there's more to Angela than I would've guessed from a distance when we were kids.

* * *

My old man's been dead three years. He died while I was incommunicado in California. I don't know all the legal terminology for it- that was his specialty, not mine- but I guess he left some loose ends when he packed it in. I might benefit financially from those loose ends, so said a lady on the phone who contacted me through my probation officer, if I was to show up and sign for them in person. My PO said he'd clear me to go back to Tulsa if I'd split the take with him 50/50. I ain't no lawyer, but I'm sure that ain't legal. Legal is not this fucker's middle name, however.

Since they both work nights, Angela and Corrina are still asleep when I get up in the morning. I plan on coming back, but I can't count on them letting me back in, so I take my bag.

I stand on the street, leaning against a bus stop, and staring up at the sky. The sky is different here than in California. It might as well be black and white. The clouds rush on past above the buildings. In Cali, everything seems to move slowly.

The bus pulls up. As I'm getting on, a girl brushes past me on her way off. She shoves something into my hand, keeps her head down, and mumbles, "If you let him be your savior, he is your savior" as she gets off the bus.

"Yeah, have a nice day," I tell her, but she's already gone.

I find a seat and open my hand to look at the paper the girl gave me. It was a flyer on a half-sheet of paper with a picture of the earth being engulfed in a mushroom cloud. A bunch of b.s. about the "end is coming" and following the savior to paradise. The savior is pictured at the bottom of sheet- the same guy from the news last night, still wearing his sunglasses. He's inviting those interested in salvation to meet with the righteous in some park by the Arkansas River. I know the place- the drunks and the kids who roll drunks used to hang out there when I was a kid. Occasionally, there'd be a good band. I wonder if I show up and request "Viva Las Vegas", if the savior would comply.

I crumple up the leaflet and leave it in the seat when I get off the bus.

The address given to my PO by woman handling my father's loose ends is a heavy bricked, Art Deco kind of building sandwiched between two newer ones. It looks legitimate enough- like the kind of place lawyers would hang out. I was suspicious that I was being lured in by someone my dad had owed money to or screwed over in one way or another, but the look of the building makes me think everything is going to be alright.

Some days, I'm still such a dope.

I check the address my PO's written down for me one more time and then go inside. The building is just like I expected it: heavy wood everywhere, a staircase that leads up the middle and two going down on either side. I go up towards a set off thick doors and find a secretary on the other side sitting behind a desk that looks like it grew up out of the wooden floor.

I feel like I'm standing in front of a judge.

"Yeah," I say. "I'm Russell Peterson. My father was Henry Peterson…"

I don't know what else to say. Turns out, that's all I need to tell her.

"Yes, of course," she says. She stretches out an arm to invite me to have a seat. "Mr. Lewis will be right with you. Please make yourself comfortable. Do you drink coffee, Mr. Peterson?"

"No, thanks." People only ever call me Mr. Peterson when they're about to sentence me to something. I don't feel like sitting down.

The secretary leaves the desk and goes through another set of doors. She returns almost immediately and holds the door open for me with her foot.

"Mr. Lewis will see you," She says.

I pause before I go any further. I wiggle my fingers at her to get her to come closer. She steps away from the door and it closes.

"Can you tell me something? Who's Mr. Lewis? What is this place?"

"This is Lewis, Larson, and Randolph, Mr. Peterson. It's a law firm, and Mr. Lewis is the lead partner."

I nod.

"What kind of law?" Like I'm going to know one kind of law from another. At least I know enough to ask. Maybe it will make me look smart.

"Probate, mostly. Personal finances. Divorce."

I should have run. I should have known right then to blow right on out of there without another word, but I didn't. The secretary opens the door again, and I blow right on in to Mr. Lewis' office instead.

The man in the office catches me off guard. I'd expected him to be behind the desk, but he's waiting to the side of the door, looking out the window. He extends a hand to me.

"Rusty James," he says. "The last time I saw you…well, you wouldn't remember. You were still on a bottle."

"Still am, more or less," I tell him. I shake his hand. It's cold and hairy, like a dead gorilla's.

He tells me to have a seat, offers me coffee, offers me a cigarette. I decline all of it but the chair.

"I suppose you're wondering," he says. "This is a long way to come for a probate."

"I ain't any big deal. I was looking for a way out of California."

"Yes, so I understand. I should begin by telling you that this firm is not handling your father's probate. That is in the hands of the State at this point. This firm is challenging your father's probate."

I guess that doesn't surprise me. "He owe you money?"

"He owes our client money, a considerable amount for mental anguish and non-support."

I should have seen it coming. "And I'm guessing this client of yours- it's my mother, right?"

Mr. Lewis nods. "Yes, Ms. Peterson…well, now Mrs. Engler… contacted us some time ago. You're a difficult man to find, Rusty James. Turns out you were under her nose all the time, if we'd only known to call Alameda County."

"You got a pen?" I ask him. "Give me a pen. I'll sign it all over to her. I don't want nothing that was his, and I don't want to be tangled up in her shit any longer than I have to be. Whatever he's got left, I _bequeath_ it to her."

Mr. Lewis raises his eyebrows. He pulls a file from the side of his desk to the center. He starts to open it and then shuts it again.

"Don't you want to know?"

"No," I tell him.

It's probably nothing more than his record collection and a pile of old law books anyway. Everything other than that, my old man either drank or gambled away years ago.

Hell, it's probably millions. In gold dubloons. I don't know. I don't want to know. If he had millions of dollars and spent all those years dragging my brother and me from one flea-bag apartment to the next, letting us starve while he drank Lysol for a kick- to hell with him. I don't want to know about that either. I'd just prefer not to know.

"One thing," I say to Mr. Lewis. "I want you to give a message to my mother. You tell her she doesn't know mental anguish from jack shit, will you? You tell her I said she is the definition of non-support. She can have everything he's got left as long as she takes it knowing that her oldest son died in the street and her youngest son's been living there all the time she's been gone. You tell her that. Let's see that pen."

Mr. Lewis squirms a little, but he opens the file, finds the paper he wants and gives me a pen out of his pocket. I got to admit- it takes every ounce of ornery I got to keep from looking at that paper to see what I'm signing away. I do it, though, without looking. I sign my _Russell James Peterson_ and hand Lewis back his pen.

"You tell her," I say one more time, get up, and walk back out the door.

The secretary tells me thank you for coming in as I pass her desk.

"Save it, baby," I tell her and then I don't breath again until I'm back out on the street. I dig a cigarette out of my shirt pocket. I smoke and fidget on the corner waiting for the bus. When the bus comes, and I'm safely a few blocks away from Lewis and his creepy office, that's when my head clears and I'm reminded again that I am not my father's most clever child.

Now I got nothing for my PO. I'd promised him half, and all I got is half of nothing. I can't go back to California, and I got nothing to get there on if I could.


End file.
